Breadcrumbs

Our Summer eReading series resumes with a scholalry work that examines many of forms of electronic literature. Analyzing Digital Fiction (Routledge 2014), edited by Alice Bell, Astrid Ensslin, and Hans Rustad, features readings from an international group of scholars on an equally international collection of works.

Collected authors, in addition to the editors, include: Serge Bouchardon, David Ciccoricco, Isabell Klaiber, Alexandra Saemmer, Roberto Simanowski, Bronwen Thomas, and Susana Tosca. Finnish scholar Raine Koskimaa says, “This book provides the reader with powerful tools to analyze and understand the emerging fictions of digital culture.” It will make a good companion to the diverse works of electronic narrative that will also be featured in our summer eReading!

From the Publisher:

Analyzing Digital Fiction offers a collection of pioneering analyses based on replicable methodological frameworks. It offers analyses of digital works that have so far received little or no analytical attention and profiles replicable methodologies which can be used in the analyses of other digital fictions. Chapters include analyses of hypertext fiction, Flash fiction, Twitter fiction and videogames with approaches taken from narratology, stylistics, semiotics and ludology. Essays propose ways in which digital environments can expand, challenge and test the limits of literary theories which have, until recently, predominantly been based on models and analyses of print texts.

A continuation of our weekly Summer eReading series, highlighting new works of e-lit and scholarship.

A certain self-referentiality and playful experimentation in works of electronic literature has won it the affection of those with an appetite for the Post-Modern. But in Jessica Pressman‘s new book, she situates these literary works in a category she calls “Digital Modernism.” Throughout the monograph, Pressman performs detailed interpretations of Young-hae Chang Heavy Industries’ Dakotaand William Poundstone’s Project for Tachistoscope {Bottomless Pit}, and other works of digital literature in the context of print-based, canonical Modernist texts such as Ezra Pound’s Cantos. In what Rita Raley calls “wonderfully elegant close readings,” Pressman demonstrates how critical reading practices evolve with developments in technologies.

In the midst of these close readings, Pressman presents her exploration of the media archaeology of older forms of “new media,” epitomized by her analysis of Bob Brown’s Readies, in which she sees anticipation of the fast-flashing words that flicker through so much electronic literature.

Jessica Pressman is currently serving on the Board of Directors of ELO, but has a much longer history of service with the organization, beginning with its time at UCLA. She will be presenting her recent research at the upcoming ELO 2014 conference in Milwaukee.

As the semesters wrap up and the summer months begin in the Northern Hemisphere, you might find yourself with a little more time to catch up on your digital lit reading. Today we begin a weekly reading series featuring recent critical and creative works in electronic literature by ELO members.

Phantasmal Media by D. Fox Harrell

The first scholarly book is Phantasmal Media: An Approach to Imagination, Computation, and Expression by D. Fox Harrell. Published in 2013, Harrell’s conceit of the phantasm offers him a framework for exploring the unseen figures (of speech, self, and thought) moving within within computational media. Among the many featured texts in the book, Fox presents two of his works Living Liberia Fabric and The Girl with Skin of Haints and Seraphs, as he discusses aspects of GRIOT, his narrative generation system.

“Pathfinders: Documenting the Experience of Early Digital Literature” is making its debut at Washington State University Vancouver July 8 – 9 in the Electronic Literature Lab in the Classroom building, room 210. Stuart Moulthrop, professor of English at the University of Wisconsin- Milwaukee and an innovator of electronic literature and hypertext fiction as both a theoretician and writer, will be the first guest. He will also lecture at 7 p.m. July 9 at Nouspace Gallery, 1005 Main St, Vancouver, Wash. The lecture, “Failure to Contain: Electronic Literature and the State of (Machine) Reading,” is free and open to the public.

The project explores the idea of digital preservation and asks the questions: What happens to literary works meant to be experienced on a computing device when the software and computer systems with and for which they were created update, change or become obsolete? Do we allow these works also to become obsolete too, or do we find ways to preserve them?

“Pathfinders,” led by Dene Grigar, associate professor and director of the creative media and digital culture program at WSU Vancouver, and Moulthrop, are developing methods for digital preservation with the goal of capturing not only the digital work but also the human experience of interacting with early digital art . It is supported by a “Digital Humanities Start Up Grant” from the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Moulthrop has produced many critically significant works of digital writing and art over the past 25 years. One of his best-known, “Victory Garden,” (1991) was produced for computers that are not compatible with current standards, making the work unavailable for web-based archives without changes to its original form.

To preserve the beauty of the original work, Grigar will videotape Moulthrop in the Electronic Literature Lab as he talks through “Victory Garden” using a vintage Mac Classic. Following Moulthrop’s reading, two readers unfamiliar with “Victory Garden” will be videotaped to produce a record of multiple readers’ experience with the work. This is a process Grigar and Moulthrop call “traversal.”

Three more “Pathfinders” traversals are scheduled through the fall. To learn more, visit http://dtc-wsuv.org/wp/pathfinders or contact Grigar at dgrigar@vancouver.wsu.edu

This CFP is aimed at participants in the 2012 ELVA conference on Electronic Literature & other scholars of electronic literature. Participants can submit their conference papers, but all relevant critical works will be considered. The selected papers will be published on New Works on Electronic Literature and Cyberculture of CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture 16.5 (2014): (Purdue University Press ISSN 1481-4374). <http://docs.lib.purdue.edu/clcweb>

Members of the Electronic Literature Organization no doubt remember the first time they heard about electronic literature. That exhilarating moment wrapped around a sense of possibility and a desire to get their hands on either the tools of creation or the mind-blowing creations or both. Over the past month, the popular science journal New Scientist has been publishing posts marking its discovery of electronic literature in a series called Storytelling 2.0.

The posts mention ELO and ELO co-founder Robert Coover along with works by Jay Bushman and others. There’s even a mention of ELO-President Nick Montfort, alluding to his work on his IF platform Curveship.

Check out the posts and join the conversation as New Scientist readers discover e-lit.

The Directory has always been key to helping outsiders discover electronic literature. With the new version, it will be even easier to add and find works of electronic literature AND criticism.

But there’s more: The ELD will feature venues or “collections,” aggregators of e-lit and criticism.

When you take a glance at our demo works, you will notice some exciting features:

In addition to basic information about author, date, url, and language, entries list software platforms as well as annotations by ELO members. However, registered users will be able to extend the discussion in the comment section or by writing a review.

The ELO Directory team has worked hard to make these works more accessible, developing search tools, categories, and tags, the subject of much discussion on Joseph Tabbi’s recent online meditation (On Reading 300 Works of Electronic Literature).

The works you see are but a small sample of the ones already vetted, but this is a special invitation to see the structure of this exciting re-imagined resource.

Start by creating an account and submitting creative or critical works or collection sites. Those submissions will be delivered to our Directory team for evaluation and review.We’re looking forward to the re-launch of this flagsite enterprise of ELO.

Watch for full announcements to follow including thanks to the team who have been working so hard to make this a possibility.

At the start of the new decade, it is impossible to predict what new forms of literature will emerge, but you at least know where you can find them: the Electronic Literature Directory.

Among the innovative writing featured at the past three &Now festivals has been a strong showing of electronic literature. Steve Tomasula sends us word that he hopes to see more at The 4th Biennial &Now Festival of Innovative Writing & the Literary Arts to be held in Buffalo, NY from October 14-17, 2009.

In a note to ELO, Steve speaks of his desire from the start to include electronic literature as a literary genre, as opposed to a specialty or an oddity. Past &Nows have featured the electronic works of Stephanie Strickland, Rob Wittig, Scott Rettberg, and MD Coverley.

As another sign of the ELO-link, this year’s festival features Robert Coover.

This should be an excellent showcase for ELO works. Please submit or join us there.

Wednesday, May 21st, from 12:30-5:00pm, ELO board member Noah Wardrip-Fruin and the Software Studies Initiative at UC San Diego invite you to attend a public event:

SoftWhere: Software Studies Workshop 2008Time: Wed. May 21 – Thu. May 22Place: Calit2, University of California, San DiegoFormat: Open public session (Wed May 21, short presentations of research in “Pecha Kucha” format)
Closed workshop session (Thu May 22)URL:http://workshop.softwarestudies.com/

Software studies is a research field that examines software and cyberinfrastructure using approaches from humanities, cultural criticism, and social sciences. Following on the first Software Studies Workshop organized by Matthew Fuller (Rotterdam, 2006 http://pzwart.wdka.hro.nl/mdr/Seminars2/softstudworkshop), the SoftWhere @ University of California, San Diego is a foundational event bringing together key figures in this emerging area to inaugurate the field. The event aims to coalesce a high-level conversation about what it means to study software cultures, and the direction and goals of Software Studies as an emerging movement. It will take place at Calit2, a pre-eminant research center for future computing and telecommunication (http://www.calit2.net/), where the Software Studies Initiative @ UCSD is located and currently collaborating with researchers on several exciting projects. SoftWhere has has also been timed to precede (and co-ordinate with) the the HASTAC II conference (http://www.hastac.org/) which will begin in nearby U. California Irvine on Thursday evening.Read more SoftWhere: Software Studies Worksop 2008 (5/21-5/22)